News & Updates

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Well the Queensland and Victorian Floods have dominated the last month – and now a cyclone is heading towards my original home town – Ayr!  Quite a start to the year!  I feel for those affected directly and indirectly.  And those landholders who have battled drought and have now lost crops, pastures, stock and infrastructure to floods.

Robyn and I were in Fiji (again! – see my earlier blog on our first visit there) at the time of the Toowoomba Tsunami and what followed!  Then we watched endless replays on BBC which showed the terrifying surge of water through the streets we knew so well.

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Well just short trips since Chile.  A couple of days in Port Lincoln where I have been doing some work with the Eyre Peninsula NRM Board – looking at planning and evaluation for the major natural resource management programs.

Port Lincoln describes itself as…a thriving City where residents and visitors enjoy a clean, safe and unique location, enhanced by the surrounding natural environment…a major service centre to the Eyre Peninsula, with burgeoning aquaculture activity and services, which are provided to the vast region. It is the home of aquaculture.  It’s certainly a pleasant seaside location – great sunrises – over the bay.

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For some reason, the dairy industry has entered my radar over the last year.  I have had an enjoyable association with Dairy NZ looking at measuring impact which included a couple of visits to Hamilton New Zealand and out of left field came an invitation to visit Chile to talk about improving technology adoption in the dairy industry.

My two major work interests are agricultural extension and program evaluation and these occasions with the dairy industry provided me with terrific opportunity to pursue both areas.  For this update, I will focus on Chile.  As you would have seen in an earlier blog, we had the opportunity to travel to South America last year – but missed out on Chile, so it was rather nice to receive an invitation to visit and learn a little about what was happening in extension there.

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Having just come back from a good six weeks holiday in Europe, I thought it time to update my blog with another overseas instalment. Having had this business for almost a decade, I thought we were entitled to long service leave like anyone else – hence a full six weeks to allow the brain to wind down fully. Fortunately for me, Amy was there to hold the fort and so I could (almost) ignore the email traffic while travelling (its remarkable how much wireless access is available out there!).

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In the extension arena, we often talk about managing change.  We talk about capacity and resilience and making changes to improve our own lives and our communities.  It’s not just about taking the latest technology and applying it – but to have thoughtfully learned from our experiences and training and weighing up what to apply across our social, economic, environmental landscape.

My father, Keith Coutts, died recently.  It is a time of change in our extended family.  Someone who was always there – back in my ‘home town’ – is there no longer.  And somehow, the rest of us fit back into normal life and move on to take his place in life’s march.

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